Obamacare: Obama’s signature chemistry set experiment

The arrogance of this president is staggering. He is so convinced he is immune from accountability that he thinks he can thumb his nose at Republicans and refuse even to come to the table and negotiate.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor sent a memo to his party membership providing an update on the government shutdown, lamenting that Obama wouldn’t negotiate and quoting author Bob Woodward’s describing Obama’s refusal as “baffling” and “in stark contrast to” President Clinton’s approach.

But unfazed, Obama will not come to the table. This is always the attitude he cops with Republicans. “I don’t want you to do a lot of talking.” “I won.” “I’m the president.”

“I, I, I, me, me, me.” It has long been apparent that Obama fantasizes at times that he has the plenary power of a king.

As I said on Sean Hannity’s show this week, President Obama acts as though America is his chemistry set and he can experiment all he wants because he is the president.

His liberal media sycophants cheer him on. NBC’s Matt Lauer gushingly approved of his colleague Chris Matthews’ assessment that Republicans are patently unreasonable to expect Obama to let Republicans diminish his “signature piece of legislation” in any way. “It’s his baby.”

Don’t you see? This fight is about Obama, not the nation’s best interests. Never mind that Obamacare is almost universally recognized as a disaster. Obama — one person — must be protected at all costs, even if that means destroying America’s health care system.

What do I mean by Obama’s chemistry set? President Obama carried his radical ideas into the White House with the idea of implementing them and fundamentally transforming America through a series of policy “experiments.” Despite all the failed statist ideas already tried and failed in our nation’s history, Obama planned on more of the same — only on a grander scale. All he needed was party support to play with his test tubes.

He has proceeded to play with this nation, wholly assaulting our founding principles — and with grievous consequences. He ramrodded through Congress a nearly $1 trillion stimulus that not only didn’t stimulate the economy but greatly exacerbated our debt. There was colossal waste, and little of the promised infrastructure improvements were made. And it led to the most anemic “recovery” in 50 years. Yet not one mea culpa from Obama. He once joked that all the “shovel-ready jobs” he’d promised didn’t materialize, but he cynically laughed it off, as if the hundreds of billions he wasted were Monopoly money. Far from repenting, he demanded billions more for infrastructure and high-speed rail.

He did the same thing with Solyndra, promising that boatloads of federal money would create thousands of green jobs. When that chemistry experiment went down in flames of corruption, waste and bankruptcy, he wrote it off to growing pains and brazenly threw more money at similar boondoggles.

His Environmental Protection Agency is conducting its own experiments with a spate of new Corporate Average Fuel Economy and coal standards — just throwing concoctions together like a mad scientist or a kid with no parental supervision — with little science behind his figures and no concern for negative economic consequences.

But Obama’s most dangerous experiment is Obamacare. Everything about it has been a lie. The driving premise for Obamacare was that it was unconscionable that “47 million people were uninsured.” In fact, some 18 million of these people could afford but chose not to purchase health insurance. Millions more were eligible for government benefits but didn’t sign up. Millions were only uninsured for part of the year. Health care expert Sally Pipes estimated that there were closer to 8 million people who earned too much to qualify for government benefits but not enough to comfortably afford health care. Obama knew this — and that there were far better and more efficient ways to help these people — but had to grossly inflate the figures because his main goal was not insurance or health care but to expand government control over our lives.

Further proving that Obama’s “coverage” goals were a shameless ruse, a new report reveals that some 25 million of the almost 50 million uninsured would remain uninsured even with Obamacare. And Obamacare is going to raise prices, lower quality, cause delays and shortages, cost twice as much as he promised, destroy full-time jobs, and rob people of their doctors and their plans. Lies upon lies.

That Obamacare was a reckless experiment is further borne out by the uniform ignorance, even among congressional Democrats, as to the contents and effects of the law. When some unintended consequences materialized, Obama just got out his chemistry set again and unilaterally and lawlessly exempted whomever he wanted from its clutches.

Now, as the formal rollout is unfolding, every American is seeing what a sick experiment has been conducted on their lives and on America’s health care system. Yet Obama urges us, with no credibility left, to be patient. We’re all going to end up loving the system.

Besides, say Obama and his Democrats, it’s the law of the land. “Quit messing with it, Republicans.” Well, the Constitution is the law of the land, as well. So is the separation of powers it establishes. So is Congress’ watchdog role over a mischievous president. So is the cynical Democratic Senate’s duty to provide a budget, a responsibility it’s repeatedly ignored.

More power to Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and the so-far-courageous House Republicans for trying to stop Obama’s destructive health care chemistry experiment before he lights the entire house on fire.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book, “The Great Destroyer,” reached No. 2 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction.